The Utopian Origins of the “Boob Tube”

Where did the boob tube come from?

Well to my young readers who may not know, old television sets were created with a large cathode-ray tube behind the whatever I don’t care. And of course ‘boob’ is a term for a bumbling idiot. The reason it was called a “boob tube” was of course is that the innuendo of it was that either the TV make you stupider, or only bumbling idiots watch the television at all! Of course in Jewish households the term is shorthand for “bubelah tubelah”.

The cultural legacy of the term “boob tube” goes even deeper. Previous generations believed that some day in the future, alongside flying cars and 1-day work weeks, televisions would be used solely to look at breasts. With enough go-getters in government combined with American ingenuity and free market principles, their utopian vision of seeing tits on TV is now a reality.

But this monumental achievement in human history did not come without its opposition. Many conservative parents and religious leaders have fought against the usage of the now ubiquitous term by using all their tools of government, media, religious shame, Facebook, and schoolboard meetings to push the widespread adoption of a censorious version — “bloob toob” — in order to prevent their little brats from being exposed to porno.

In 2025, Americans of working age (10-85) currently work six and a half days a week, but we still find time to catch up on our stories, all thanks to progress and capitalist innovation. By removing the necessity of the large and cumbersome ‘tube’ part of the television, billions of humans all over the world now walk around 24/7 with boobs in their hands.

I’m Butterfly, and thank you for reading.